I froze, not knowing what to say- my mind was blank. I did not know what to say. I had just written down some points on an article discussing on whether teenagers should be held liable for their own online comments. However, I just could not recall a single thing to say in front of my mother, who was listening. This is one of my biggest problems- to stand up in front of someone and speak naturally about a topic. However, to get into my dream CCA, debates, I knew that I had to work hard to overcome it. In the allocated time that I set to overcome this problem, I was unable to do much and I decided to do more the next day, the 20th of December.

Yesterday, I finally had a breakthrough. First, my parents asked me to repeat simple sentences like "My name is Alex Cheong" and "This is wrong. If everyone does that, the world will be in trouble" in as many different tones as possible- angry, sad, timid, arrogant etc. Then, I said out a topic on "My Dream House", one of the blog posts I had recently written. My mother used a video camera to record it down and it took me quite a long time before I had finally gathered every ounce of my courage to stand up in front of the camera and say out the words. It was not very natural at first, but I managed to get the hang of saying it, and before I knew it, I had finished speaking for four whole minutes. It was difficult task, but I did it in the end.

Both my parents and I were over the moon, and I was proud that I had broken this speaking barrier and could speak up. I think that this is a big milestone for me. With this improvement, I can continue to practise more until I have built a strong foundation in this aspect and can continue to build on this to improve further. I am sure that with constant improvement, I will be able to get into the debate CCA in my secondary school!